guess who’s back...woof 🤦🏻‍♀️ found a teeny, tiny lump near my mastectomy site, and a biopsy confirmed it’s cancer, again. it took a while for me to share this time around because, frankly, it’s been a really hard and emotional few months. statistically speaking, there was a 98% chance my cancer wouldn’t come back in my lifetime; i hit the 2 year mark, had a complete pathological response to chemo and took the most aggressive treatment measures available. yet here we are. after the biopsy, we did scans to see if it traveled anywhere else. a spot flagged on my back rib, but 4+ very skilled radiologists couldn’t, with total certainty, confirm it was cancer or a broken rib. at that point i was considered metastatic and given a stage iv diagnosis. we would do a follow up scan after 3 rounds of chemo to see how the rib spot responded. the weight of this was extremely heavy. the 5 yr survival rate for stage iv is 22% with a median survival of 3 years. how do you live in the present and plan for a future that is statistically very uncertain? tears were shed. support groups were joined. plans to start a family were shelved. hard conversations were had. there weren’t words to soothe our situation. we had to wade these waters and accept the possibility of a radically different future. fortunately, after four VERY long months, a follow up scan confirmed it was a fractured rib. i never thought i would be so happy to have “a little bit of breast cancer and a broken rib.” (note to self, a $100 tv stunt credit is not worth it!) i still have a year of chemo a head of me, surgery and 30 rounds of radiation, but holy smokes does this feel more manageable. they say life is all about perspective, and i’ve definitely gained a new one... again :)